Women Have Made Significant Progress in the Cabinet
But there is still a ways to go…
No institution better embodies the advancements made by women at the highest levels of power and the challenges that remain than the president’s Cabinet.
On September 11, 1789, President George Washington nominated the first candidates for the secretaries of the executive departments. In 1933–143 years after the first Cabinet appointment — President Franklin D. Roosevelt named Frances Perkins as secretary of labor, the first woman to hold a Cabinet position.
Since then, women have shaped the Cabinet, contributed to executive branch governance, and expanded their role at the federal level. This evolution culminated in President Biden’s Cabinet, which features gender parity for the first time. But parity is not equality, and there are still Cabinet glass ceilings women have yet to shatter.
Read more on the precedent setting women and what additional improvements I’d like to see happen in the future in the full piece at Ms. Magazine:
Women in the Cabinet: Much Progress Has Been Made, But There’s Still a Long Way to Go
Ms. Magazine, Lindsay M. Chervinsky